Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/89

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out a loaf of refined sugar, broke off a great piece, which he put in Noureddin’s cup, saying, ‘O my lord, if thou fear to drink wine, because of its bitterness, drink now, for it is sweet.’ So he took the cup and emptied it: whereupon one of his comrades filled him another, saying, ‘I am thy slave,’ and another [did the like], saying, ‘I am one of thy servants,’ and a third said, ‘For my sake!’ and a fourth, ‘God on thee, O my lord Noureddin, heal my heart!’ And so they plied him with wine, till they had made him drink ten cups.

Now Noureddin’s body was virgin [of wine-bibbing], nor all his life had he drunken wine till then, wherefore its fumes mounted to his brain and drunkenness was stark upon him and he stood up (and indeed his tongue was embarrassed and his speech thick) and said, ‘O company, by Allah, ye are fair and your speech and place are goodly, but there needs the hearing of sweet music; for drink without music lacks the chief of its essentials, even as saith the poet:

Pass round the cup to the old and the young man, too, And take the bowl from the hand of the shining moon,^[1]
But without music, I charge you, forbear to drink; I see even horses drink to a whistled tune.’^[2]

Therewith up rose the gardener and mounting one of the young men’s mules, was absent awhile, after which he returned with a girl of Cairo, as she were a delicate fat sheep’s tail or pure silver or a dinar in a porcelain dish or a gazelle in the desert. She had a face that put to shame the shining sun and bewitching eyes^[3] and brows like

1. i.e. a fair-faced cup-bearer.
2. It is the custom of the Arabs to call their cattle to water by whistling.
3. Lit. Babylonian eyes. According to Arab tradition, Babylon (Babel) is the metropolis of sorcery, the two offending angels, Harout and Marout (who teach men witchcraft), being suspended in a well there. See ante, note, Vol. III. p. 104.